Steiner baffled by ‘amazingly slow’ Haas cars in Bahrain GP

Haas team boss Guenther Steiner described his team’s performance in the Bahrain Grand Prix as ‘amazingly slow’ and said his team are struggling to understand why their pace dropped so dramatically compared to qualifying.

Haas appeared on course for another strong points haul in Bahrain with Kevin Magnussen starting the race from sixth and Romain Grosjean from 11th.

It was a day to forget though for the American team as Grosjean was forced to retire with damage, while Magnussen slid seven places from his starting spot to finish in 13th place

“It’s unbelievable how slow we were, and we have no understanding yet. Amazingly slow,” Steiner told Danish TV station TV3+.

“Going from qualifying [sixth] to a race car like this, I don’t know what we did. I think the only good thing is we are here testing on Tuesday and Wednesday so at least we have enough time tomorrow to come up with some scenarios we need to test to see.

“It looks like we didn’t get the tyres to work on the long runs, but then again, by no means is that a conclusion. At least we’ve got the time to go through testing on Tuesday and Wednesday and hopefully learn something.

Steiner was able to draw some positives from the result, pointing to the fact that rivals Renault failed to score any points with both their drivers not finishing the race.

“I think the silver lining is that nobody gained on us. We are basically at zero again. The drivers didn’t [score] any points but at least we didn’t lose anything against anybody so there is that to say,” said Steiner.

“I really hope this week, I don’t know if we can fix the problem but [we need to] at least get an understanding of why our performance dropped so dramatically from qualifying to the race because I have no idea.”

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